Watching A War

Watching A War / Joshua Alan Sturgill

I am left thinking Jerusalem
must be the world’s doorpost
— center of a rift
(from Malawi to Baikal) slowly
filling with salt.

In the Mid-
west, one small office building
rises and the entire prairie
disappears — all that perfect
union of earth and sky

helpless against forty feet
of aluminum and glass.
The Dead Sea
isn’t the lowest shore
in North America; we have

our own valleys, our own
city centers ready
to paint with blood.
From here, it’s difficult to see
where the world began

again. And we’ve never needed
to know, so long
as those ancient sutures
were holding
everything in place